still small voice

Still Small Voice: Readers respond

One reader likened his faith to a foreign body his immune system is at war with. Another criticized our failure to include a committed atheist among our interview subjects. And a third said she "really appreciated being given the framing that we are partners with God in the work that needs to be done."

In the month leading up to the High Holy Days, we published a series of 18 interviews with Jewish thinkers tackling 18 questions about the divine. Abigail Pogrebin, who spearheaded this special project, heard from many of you that these questions resonated -- and raised new ones. With Yom Kippur behind us, we want to continue this important discussion.

On Thursday at noon ET/9 a.m. PT, Abby and four of her interviewees -- Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, Rabbi David Ingber of Manhattan's Romemu and Dr. Laura Shaw Frank of the American Jewish Committee -- will be in conversation with our editor-in-chief about the series.

We'll talk then about some of Abby's takeaways from her months pondering these complex questions with rabbis and others from all backgrounds. The series, as she wrote in her final piece, "was all about the gray -- the struggle to understand whether and how God is in the room."

None of Abby's conversation partners pushed her -- or us -- to believe any specific thing. But the questions, and answers, created a vibrant spiritual pathway for all who want to walk down it.

You could start with Abby's introductory essay (click here), or her final takeaways (click here) -- or you could pick among the interviews highlighted below (we only had room for 12). The whole collection is here.

Art by: Noah Lubin

Rabbi Laura Geller
‘I am accountable to you because if you are suffering, so am I. It isn’t that some commander is making a claim.’

Rabbi Rachel Timoner
‘I don’t feel judged as in, there’s an outside being looking at me, shaking its finger.’

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer
‘Genuinely religious people should not be certain people. They should actually be ambivalent people.’

Rabbi Sholom Lipskar
‘I know that there's a reason that I stayed alive...There's still no question that HaShem has a role in everything.'

Rabbi David Ingber: ‘I feel that God's with me all the time. Even in the most horrific moments.'

Rabbi Ken Chasen
‘I've never seen faith and science as being in any way in competition with one another. They're asking different questions.’

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
‘God relates to us as adults; instead of dazzling us as children with pyrotechnics and goodies.'

Rabbi Amy Schwartzman
‘A holy place or moment doesn’t have to be peaceful.’

Rabbi David Wolpe
'The definition of a good act is to do something without knowing what the consequences will be to you.'

Rabbi Adam Kligfeld
'I am not willing to pray to a God who preferred the wide receiver wearing the green uniform over the defender wearing the red.'

Rabbi Sandra Lawson
‘That was definitely God moving through the protestors.’

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl
‘I'm constantly amazed by what human beings can do. But I don't think that's the reason God loves us.’

BROWSE THE COLLECTION

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